After good success with the F330, we moved on to the F450 and our first attempt at the KK2 (specifically the KK2.1.5) with all parts that were 2 years old and never powered up from the abandoned Arduino. The motors, esc were all reused.

Size compare test. On the left is the Aliencopter 430mm from Hobbyking

Open your wings…arms, 10 inch propellers.

Almost done. Load up the SJ4000, GPS, video transmitter and lipo

Yes, the 10 inch props will be in the camera view when mount this way. The slight downward tilt will help.

Short clip of first flight

Likes:

– It’s size! Just LOOK AT IT! It’s about 26mm (with a little Turnigy 3S 2650 sticking out, measurement include the sticking out of the lipo and rubber band mounted SJ4000 but do not include the VTX antenna we have sticking way back) x 23.5mm x 12.5 high (include the prop nut of the Emax 2213) when folded.
– Innovative folding mechanism with spares (plastic thingy and springs)! In case you damage it or wear it out. We could also say they foresee it wearing out fast? Time will tell.
– Well though out location for your electronics. A dangling bracket for your video transmitter (VTX) that won’t cause interference since it’s all the way outside.
– Cute rubber “landing gear”.
– Already drilled holes for your GPS folding or non folding (that came with your Naza) antenna.

– No space without some serious modification to mount a front mounted gimbal. It does provide you with a servo based front gimbal. If you already own a brushless one like us (We have 2 Tarot T2-D gimbals), you need to do some mods.

And so…

In our quest to finding the ideal small, foldable, runs 10 inch props, 4S 5000 or more. Can lift a gimbal. This has got to be the closest yet! We see us travelling with this a lot more, even overseas!

To Do:

– Mod the tarot gimbal to front mount.
– Add tilt to receiver
– Mod height of battery compartment or
– Move everything into the battery compartment and just hang the lipo underneath, if so,
– Mod new landing gear. Some retractable?! Just so it looks cool
– Add more LEDs! lol
– Get the Version 2 Pro! As of writing, out “soon”. Video of V2 below. As of writing, it’s been 2 months of “coming soon”.

The Best Hobby Mall’s Night Hawk 250 was our first venture into 250mm class quads. It had a nice introduction price of $39.99 USD with free shipping and it’s really non nonsense free shipping. We got it shipped to Singapore.

Rebuild it and flown it with a Hobbyking Naze 32 (This is the soldered horizontal pins version. There is a vertical pin version and a no pins version). Great fun as well. Picked up a pack of spare accessories that consists of all the bolt, nuts and blue rubber thingy as well.

The ESCs didn’t like being cramped together and we learn the hard way. It just never flew properly. After one ESC discarded and all moved to the arms later, we were flying again.

Rebuild 1 – 15 Sept 2014

It never flew properly on a KK2.1.5, gave up and anxious to fly it, swop to a DJI Naza M Lite with GPS. yes, a little crazy with the GPS and all but it flew great!

A photo posted by =In The Course Of Work= (@itcow) on Dec 9, 2014 at 4:13am PST

The Nighthawk 250 has another change and it’s to Naze32 this time. We picked up the Naze32 from Hobbyking. Bluetooth What you must buy, repeat MUST, when you get the Naze32 is the Bluetooth module and while at it, pick up a buzzer too, we reuse the one from our KK2 board. Once flying stable on default PID, all you need to do is change the rate for roll, pitch and yaw. Here’s ours, change from 0 to 0.50 then finally to 0.8 and you’ll be flipping with great fun without loose altitude. Android Apps

The Hobbyking Aliencoptor 430mm is one of the nicest frame thus far that we have built.

Following from Hobbyking product page. This is the 430mm version. Aliencopter has another 470mm version that folds slightly different here. Here for people who can’t see the page. We still cannot figure why they don’t like traffic from Singapore.

It got us getting out Paypal account ready when we recently crashed the F330. Got another team member, the Mrs. to rebuilt that while this Aliencopter gets built too.

The manual is horrible. So here’s better pics! We can’t vouch for better words but it sure is better with the original manual having little and quite useless instructions.

Top Chamber

Build up the top chamber first and the stand offs. Leave the upper most plate off for Flight Controller installation.

Put in the 8 red standoffs. We swop out the screws after the first few flights. They are simply too short to be able to hold the top plate nicely and it keeps coming off ripping the threads away from the tip of the short screws.

Arms

Install the standoffs on the arms. Note that these 4 standoffs are packed separated from the above 8 pieces with it’s corresponding screws.

Install the motors. We migrated some DJI 2212 from the last Reptile Build here. It already has nice long cables that we tuck below the arms then back up again, later to the ESCs. We removed the DJI and mounted EMAX as the DJI can’t take some standard propellors the emax could. The center hub was thicker at 10mm.

Run the cables on the outside so when folded, the cables dont come into place and get sliced.

Bottom Assembly

Install all the teeny tiny screws and standoffs on the bottom plate. We like to have the “arrow” design pointing forward but it’s no difference since it’s a quad. If you have any preference like us, you have to decide now so it’s tidy.

Power Power Power

Install the PDB. We made use of the existing one from myrcmart since it’s a nicely solder with 4 x 30A Opto from DJI. Just made use of some standoffs. There are some transparent nylon screws with nylon nuts and standoffs. These are all for the Aliencopter PDB that came with it. Do not use metal standoffs. We skip using the provided one as we have existing ones. The provided Aliencopter one has blue LEDs like what we ordered separately from Goodluckbuy and installed on our Alien560mm.

Put in the bottom plate 2. We only screw in 2 center screws right in the middle for now for adjustment. Layout the ESCs. Put in the arms Screw in all bottom screws. Completed.

In the field

We brought this quad to St John’s Island and the neighboring island and it’s a blast to fly it around but the constant dismantling and assembling of the arms is really frustrating.

Being on the island, we decided to simply strap it on the bag and walk around with it out of the bag, assembled and ready to fly. It doesn’t cause much alarm with the whole quad in the open as these island are only full of anglers and a few tourists.

Our contraption works great using only cable ties, strapping the dismantled Tarot T2-D gimbal to the front of the whole quad.

We used the Hobbyking single cable to do “traditional” setup of the Naza M V2.

End

The most irritatant was the constant assembly of the arms and dismantling of the arms. The size is generally the same as compared to the ATG 12 inch foldable quadcopter but the ATG using Tarot type catches that do not require removing screws to be ready to fly.

Next up

– 3D Printed front gimbal mount to replace the zip ties
– Repositioning of the GPS, video transmitter and receiver into the cage

overall more space at the back for the GPS and the Lipo can be pushed all the way to the back to counter the weight of the gimbal at the front

– Try out with 9047 and 1045 propellors hoping to get a little more flight time. We average 10.5 mins now with the gimbal and a Turnigy 5000 mah lipo